By Rhondor Dowlat
Wednesday, May 28 2008
newsday.co.tt
EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Hope Arismandez is dead.
The little girl’s battered and bruised body was found in a canefield in the village of Petersfield, on the outskirts of Felicity, late last evening.
Hope was raped, buggered and stabbed to death. Her semi-nude body was left on a dirt road in the canefield, which runs parallel to Pierre Road, Charlieville.
Homicide detectives disclosed that there was a stab-wound to the anus and a knife was recovered from the canefield.
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“Breathes there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! If such there breathe, go, mark him well; for him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, boundless his wealth as wish can claim, Despite those titles, power, and pelf, the wretch, concentered all in self”
PRIME Minister Patrick Manning yesterday agreed to set up a commission on inquiry into the controversial Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (Udecott) and the practices of the construction industry, in place of the joint select committee (JSC) he had previously proposed.
I have spoken with Calder Hart only once, when he belatedly responded to a call I had made to UDeCOTT seeking to talk with him on a story I was working on. It turned out that he had been out of the country when I had tried to reach him. He was very polite, even effusive, promising to talk with me anytime, on any matter concerning UDeCOTT. He came across as a journalist’s delight: most people in his position normally refer lowly plebs of the Fourth Estate to some PR “spin doctors”, who, in turn, ask for questions to be formally e-mailed to them, and then take forever to give half-answers.
Five months ago, the PNM was elected to serve as the Government of the people of T&T although it received 43 per cent of the votes. 
There should be no tears shed over Government’s decision to hold parliamentary Joint Select Committee meetings in camera, and not on camera. Already, members of the Opposition and some independent senators have expressed outrage, accusing the Government of using its majority to muzzle MPs and senators. Many people who follow parliamentary proceedings also view the move as one to deny the public the right to follow the proceedings of these committees. It reeks of cover-up, they argue.
TWO Trinidadians and four Venezuelans were yesterday sentenced to life imprisonment for trafficking cocaine in what the trial judge said was the “largest amount to ever pass through the courts of Trinidad and Tobago.”